“He held 128 gun patents and designed and built 80 separate firearms — 44 of them manufactured by Winchester.”
Winchester became the ‘Gun that Won the West’ ONLY because of Browning selling them his patents. Wonder how successful Winchester would have been without him?
To be fair, the "Gun that Won the West" was the 1873 Winchester repeating rifle based on the "Volcanic" pistol which was developed when Browning was only 3 years old. Browning took that design and made it stonger, more able to handle large caliber rounds.
Well, to give them credit they did have the Henry Repeater to work from. Of course that one was invented by B. Tyler Henry, so they can’t actually claim that one either. I am not sure if the 1866 winchester was their design or not, I think it was simply an improvement on the Henry.